Leaving Geraldton

Well, we thought we were leaving Geraldton early on Wednesday morning, planning to have the suspension on the van checked as arranged and be on our way. Wrong! Oh, so wrong!

The suspension ‘problem’ that Ian thought he had noticed when we left Perth and thoughtfully took a photo of and took it to the  van repair centre where it was decided that it needed further investigation.

Yup, so far so good. We left the park at Geraldton telling our friends, Allan and Karen that we would no doubt see them later that day at Kalbarri. Not quite. You see the suspension was not only suspicious but stuffed. OK, that doesn’t sound good.

Fortunately we were in early and there was a fifth wheeler booked in to have the suspension replaced. Lucky us, sad for him as they decided to use the suspension that was waiting for him on our van as otherwise we would have had to wait for one from Melbourne. Wouldn’t we have loved that! We don’t know what story the owner of the fifth wheeler got, and frankly ….. care factor …. Nil!

To fill in our day which now looked more than a tea break, we went back to the HMAS Sydney Memorial and had the opportunity to take the guided tour which was well worth the time.

Anyway new suspension fitted, some further reduction on the kids’ inheritance and we are on our way. Good news is, the suspension would probably have given way and knowing us we would have been in the middle of no-where and Ian said we would have been waiting for a flat top to load us up and take us somewhere where it would have cost more. (So there Peter!)

We stopped for the night at a free camp where Ian met a very interesting one legged man by the name of “Stumpy”, had a peg leg not a prosthetic limb (I kid you not!), a picture on the back of his camper of a pirate and a stuffed parrot in his van. God, he really looked like a pirate!  Sue stayed in the van and got dinner whilst Ian gleaned all the knowledge he needed of free camps and how to avoid fees in National Parks. This knowledge will not be used as Suey considered Stump’s credibility somewhat flawed.

Along the way we enjoyed a couple of the wildflowers we are a little too early for, so these ones really stand out amongst the rest  of green only plants at this time of year.